I have to be honest, this novel blew me away. As a thriller writer believe me when I tell you it takes something extraordinary to keep me reading. Red Queen has that and more
The book revolves around its main character, Antonia Scott and a more enigmatic, prismatic woman I cannot imagine. She is such an extraordinary creation I’ll readily admit there were times while reading I wish I had created her. She is introduced to us as someone considering committing suicide, not because she’s in despair or down on her luck, but because of the very specific anomalies of her mind. In fact, Antonia’s mind is the core around which the entire novel revolves. Masterly.
Antonia is the Red Queen, but you'll have to find out for yourselves what that means. I make it a point never to divulge spoilers, ever. But as I read the novel, as I sank deeper and deeper, layer by layer, into Antonia’s psyche, I felt as if I had entered a labyrinth of mirrors.
There were traits I recognized as bizarre reflections of my own mind. I honestly have never read another book (except mine, I suppose!) where I so related to the main character in a world totally familiar to me – a parallel to the one I have created for my own hero, Evan Ryder.
As a long-time successful thriller writer I am always winkling out faults in thriller novels, much as a film director can’t help but find the flaws in other directors’ work. It’s not that I want to do that – I simply can’t help it; it’s the way my mind works. Which leads us back to Antonia, the Red Queen.
This novel has no faults. It is perfect, one I want to reread over and over. That’s the highest praise I can give.
Now an Amazon Prime Original series, Red Queen is the first in Juan Gomez-Jurado's internationally bestselling thriller series, translated by Nick Caistor. Winner of the Cognac Prize 2022 with more than two million copies sold in Spain alone.
Sunday Times - Best Thriller Books of the Year
'A Spanish spin on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo . . . A female Sherlock Holmes' - The Times
You've never met anyone like her . . .
Antonia Scott is special. Very special. She is not a policewoman or a lawyer. She has never wielded a weapon or carried a badge,…
There are, at the moment, a glut of authors writing about England in the 1800’s, but none of them can hold a candle to Laura Shepherd-Robinson.
Her prose is so immersive you are almost instantly transported back in time and place. Settle in for a fantastic experience, exploring the squalid and eye-opening underbelly of London’s ladies of the night.
One of this author’s trademarks is creating full-blown characters who you come to know and love within a few pages of their being introduced. Chief among them, and why I love this book above her other two, is her main character, Caroline Corsham, easily one of my favorite characters.
Caro is everything you want in a hero – smart, tough-minded, persistent in running down the perpetrator of the murders that keep the plot of this book racing along mud-splattered roads. I think about Caro all the time and sincerely hope the author decides to write another book with her in the center. Both of them deserve that encore.
'The best historical crime novel I will read this year' - The Times
From the pleasure palaces and gin-shops of Covent Garden to the elegant townhouses of Mayfair, Laura Shepherd-Robinson's Daughters of Night follows Caroline Corsham as she seeks justice for a murdered woman whom London society would rather forget . . .
'This is right up there with the best of C. J. Sansom and Andrew Taylor' - Amanda Craig, author of The Golden Rule
London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline 'Caro' Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she…
This is a unique novel, both in ideas and in concept.
It’s actually two novels in one, the first taking place in 1880s England, the second in1930s California. The two novels are apposite, meaning after you finish the first you’re obliged to flip the book over to read the second. This format is actually quite old. It’s called tête-bêche – a book split into two parts back-to-back, head-to-foot.
To be honest, I don’t know how this will work or if it will work in ebook form. But like all of my picks it should be read in hardcover. The two tales are steeped in the mores of their respective time periods. They read like a first-rate thriller, and of course both become revelatory at the end of the second novel when they intersect.
The author’s grasp of both time periods is absolute and his characters grip you from the first page onward. Not to be missed.
'Not just a book, but an experience - one in which twists and turns are both on the page and in the very act of reading itself. Two haunting narratives conspire to create a dark, menacing tale that spans half a century of secrets as they echo back and forth - all while the sand slowly drains away . . . This is a story about stories and their perspectives, the passage of time and the slow march of the inevitable. Vivid, resonant, melancholy and beautiful' Janice Hallett
'A stunning, ingenious, truly immersive mystery. The Turnglass…
Evan Ryder is an extraordinary intelligence field agent now working for the security arm of Parachute, a private company and the world’s leader in the application of quantum technology. In the past, Ryder has done lethal battle in the modern global wars of power politics. But now she finds herself in a battle arena whose dangers are greater than anything seen before – the present and future war of weaponized quantum technology.
When an elite Russian scientist and the American Secretary of Defense die at the same time half a world apart the world’s intelligence services realize that the quantum war has begun. Ryder and her long-time partner, Ben Butler, will risk their lives to discover who the true combatants are, racing against the doomsday of all-out war between America and Russia.
